I think we’re about at the point now where the combination of airline asshatery and TSA goombahs have ensured I will never fly again unless my job absolutely 100% requires it.
I wish there was a better way to travel from VA to CA, or I would, too. Amtrak takes a week :(
So has all this TSA security theater ever actually caught anything insidious? Because every time I hear about some new terrorist problem, it seems like it got right past the security line with little problem. Are there dozens of plots foiled at the security line we simply don’t hear about?
My ongoing plot to retain my dignity, yeah.
They have those body scanners at the Calgary airport now, just for international flights for now. I don’t think everyone gets routed through them, just if you’re unlucky enough to get put in the extra-screening line.
Unfortunately on my last trip I found myself in said line, and once you get close, it looks quite intimidating; it’s like a glass bubble, set apart enough from everything around it that you’d almost certainly feel quite conspicuous going through it. I opted for the pat-down instead, which was no worse than any other pat-down after tripping the detectors or being randomly picked.
Hmm, what would happen if you just started stripping naked? What’s public indecency/exposure, a misdemeanor?
H.
I agree with the suggestion I read somewhere that this may be the best way to go through a backscanner.
So what are the odds of a Middle-Eastern looking fellow in his early twenties not getting ‘random searched’ at an airport? Because I flew a lot this past week due to family obligations (all within Canada) and I got selected at ‘random’ for the extra security five fucking times out of six. I hate to play the race card, but if it’s not my apparent ethnicity, what the shit else could it be?
Usually when I fly home from school I can expect to get ‘random’ searched one out of the four times I usually go through security. But five out of six? Dayum.
It can’t be. Canadians aren’t racist.
Anecdotally, 1 out of . . . 30? 40 since 9/11? And that one I can’t really blame them, I was hung over and pissed off, and I imagine it showed. Which tells you it isn’t random.
I’m whitebread.
H.
I got extra screening once at Orange County. They pulled me out of line, looked in my bags, made me stand in the air-puff scanner, and sent me on my way. Got to skip the big security line. That wasn’t bad, heh.
That was also odd in that apparently it’s a random thing that gets printed on boarding passes when you check in. So unless the check-in agent hit the secret “OH SHIT THIS GUY HAS A BEARD LOOK OUT!!!” button while I was at the self-service kiosk, it certainly looked random.
And yeah, my ancestry is all kinds of northern European.
The newspaper tells me that all of the security lines at the Pittsburgh airport have the dick-staring backscatter machine now. This is making me look forward to the business trip I’m taking in a couple weeks a bit less now.
Still not so sure I want to opt for getting groped instead, though.
I posed this question to Michael Chertoff during his farewell press tour when Obama was coming into office. He said they had stopped people with “bomb parts”, but couldn’t actually make himself say “bombs”. Then he told me he couldn’t tell me their success rate, because that would be a risk to security.
In short: Nobody knows, by design, for the best and worst reasons.
Technically, assuming the terrorists aren’t complete idiots, they’ll shift their activity to areas that aren’t tracked as closely - like, say, cargo. So whether TSA does or doesn’t catch any terrorists doesn’t prove much either way.
Yes. This happened a while ago when a female passenger was so pissed off at being harassed for her wired bra, that she took her top off. They arrested her, natch.
My question is… if they scan a child, can we arrest them for producing child porn?
Does this belong here or the poker thread?
After an hour of waiting, I made it to the front, where I was asked the usual questions. Where do I live? What do I do for work? What is the purpose of my trip? How long will I be there? I answered every question with what would turn out to be the worst possible answer — the truth. I told them that I am a professional poker player with rental property in Hong Kong and Vancouver, and that I was going down to train martial arts for two months, including participating in a major tournament. I made it very clear I had no plans to stay in the United States past December. They told me to sit down. About 30 minutes later, I was asked another round of questions. These questions from the same officer were much more accusatory. How could I prove I wasn’t trying to stay in the states indefinitely? What ties do I have to Canada? What ties do I have to Hong Kong? What assurances can you give that you will leave the US? I answered that I own property outside of the US that I have to manage, that all my family lives outside of Canada, that I have poker sponsorship opportunities awaiting me in the Asia-Pacific region. “But none of these things prove that you will leave the U.S.” I was told to sit back down, and waited for another 30 minutes. I was then called up again, taken to the back, fingerprinted, and told to sit back down.
So… they kicked him out. So he came back, this time with all the paperwork he could muster.
They went through every piece of paperwork I had and found something wrong with it in one way or another. I had last month’s internet bill in Vancouver and my electric bill in Hong Kong; they now told me I needed six months of bills. They said I needed credit card statements with activity to prove I was spending time in those places. They said I needed a job with pay stubs, and they said that that job had to be where I was physically present, such that it would not be possible for me to do it in the States. They didn’t like that my plane ticket from Vancouver to Hong Kong was only for two months, even though neither of those places is in the United States. He even tried to twist my words of “I’m going to train martial arts” as meaning that I was going to work illegally. “If you don’t have a visa for that, you can’t come in.” Quite simply, they never had any intent of letting me in the country, no matter what I showed, said, or did. There is no conceivable way that I could have convinced them otherwise. I was fingerprinted again and once again shown the door… I am a law-abiding, honest, wealthy and mobile Canadian who wanted to come for two months, rent a property, buy groceries, pay fees to a school, spend money on entertainment, and leave. For this, I get treated like a criminal. Well, no more. I’m done with the United States.
MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!
I keep clicking whatthefuckhasobamadonesofar.com and it hasn’t gotten to the part where he abolished the TSA.
This reminds me of the story where they googled the guy as he came to the border crossing, and banned him for an article on LSD that he had written in the 70s.
Actually, random searching is pretty stupid. Profile searching is more sensible. Sucks to be a early 20’s middle eastern looking fellow though.
Heh, I switched to slip on shoes for travel. I share the same name, nationality & religion as a certain other english muslim convert who tried to blow up an aircraft with a bomb in his shoe. Chance of me getting through a US airport without extra security checks - almost nil.
yeah and now you have 666 posts, you’re literally satan irl